A Great Emergency and Other Tales | Page 4

than this.
Henrietta was very good at inventing things. Once she invented a
charade quite like a story. Rupert was very much pleased with it,
because he was to act the hero, who was to be a young cavalier of a
very old family--our family. He was to arrive at an inn; Henrietta made
it the real old inn in the middle of the town, and I was the innkeeper,
with Henrietta's pillow to make me fat, and one of Nurse's clean aprons.
Then he was to ask to spend a night in the old Castle, and Henrietta

made that the real Castle, which was about nine miles off, and which
belonged to our cousin, though he never spoke to us. And a ghost was
to appear. The ghost of the ancestor in the miniature in Mother's
bedroom. Henrietta did the ghost in a white sheet; and with her hair
combed, and burnt-cork moustache, she looked so exactly like the
picture that Rupert started when she came in, and stared; and Mother
said he had acted splendidly.
Henrietta was wonderfully like the picture. Much more like than Rupert
ever was, which rather vexed him, because that ancestor was one of the
very bravest, and his name was Rupert. He was rather vexed, too, when
she rode the pony bare-backed which had kicked him off. But I think
the pony was fonder of Henrietta, which perhaps made it easier for her
to manage it. She used to feed it with bits of bread. It got them out of
her pocket.
One of the things Henrietta could not do as well as Rupert was cricket.
Rupert was one of the best players in the school. Henrietta used to want
to play with us at home, and she and I did play for a bit, before
breakfast, in the drying ground; but Rupert said, if I encouraged her in
being unladylike, he would not let me come to the school matches. He
said I might take my choice, and play either with girls or boys, but not
with both. But I thought it would be very mean to leave Henrietta in the
lurch. So I told her I would stick by her, as Rupert had not actually
forbidden me. He had given me my choice, and he always kept his
word. But she would not let me. She pretended that she did not mind;
but I know she did, for I could see afterwards that she had been crying.
However, she would not play, and Mother said she had much rather she
did not, as she was so afraid of her getting hit by the ball. So that
settled it, and I was very glad not to have to give up going to the school
matches.
The school we went to was the old town grammar school. It was a very
famous one; but it was not so expensive as big public schools are, and I
believe this was why we lived in this town after my father's death, for
Mother was not at all rich.
The grammar school was very large, and there were all sorts of boys

there--some of gentlemen, and tradesmen, and farmers. Some of the
boys were so very dirty, and had such horrid habits out of school, that
when Rupert was thirteen, and I was ten, he called a council at the
beginning of the half, and a lot of the boys formed a committee, and
drew up the code of honour, and we all subscribed to it.
The code of honour was to forbid a lot of things that had been very
common in the school. Lying, cheating over bargains, telling tales,
bragging, bad language, and what the code called "conduct unbecoming
schoolfellows and gentlemen." There were a lot of rules in it, too, about
clean nails, and shirts, and collars and socks, and things of that sort. If
any boy refused to agree to it, he had to fight with Thomas Johnson.
There could not have been a better person than Rupert to make a code
of honour. We have always been taught that honour was the
watch-word of our family--dearer than anything that could be gained or
lost, very much dearer than mere life. The motto of our arms came from
an ancestor who lost the favour of the King by refusing to do
something against his conscience for which he would have been
rewarded. It is "Honour before honours."
I can just remember the man, with iron-grey hair and gold spectacles,
who came to our house after my father's death. I think he was a lawyer.
He took lots of snuff, so that Henrietta sneezed when he kissed her,
which made her very angry. He put Rupert and me in front of him, to
see which